Cisco to Enhance Industrial Security Offerings with Sentryo Acquisition

In June 2019, Cisco announced plans to acquire French industrial security startup Sentryo for an undisclosed amount. The U.S. networking giant is clearly committed to expanding into the relatively undersold critical market of industrial cybersecurity. Sentryo is only four years old, but it has some highly effective solutions for operational technology systems and its platform is supported by a number of prominent industrial Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), including Siemens, Schneider Electric, ABB, Honeywell, Emerson, Mitsubishi Electric, and Rockwell Automation, among others. Sentryo also recently raised EUR10 million in Series A from mostly French investors, but requires much more to tackle the industrial space, which can be overwhelming due to the large number of different Operational Technology (OT) systems currently used. As such, the acquisition is a boon for Sentryo, and its current success in the market positions it as a valuable asset to a company like Cisco7, the paragon of the Information Technology (IT) networking world.

For the smart connected industries of the future, the OT/IT convergence has to be a core component of digital evolution; there is no use connecting a factory robotic arm if the IT command and control infrastructure can’t talk to it. As such, there needs to be some kind of network visibility and then management interface between the two worlds. Much as security is an inherent part of IT networks (i.e., firewalls, secure channels, and access control), so it must be for the OT. The issue is that the OT space is full of legacy, proprietary technologies that have been sitting in unconnected isolation for decades (security through obscurity). With its exposure to the IT world of malware and cyberattacks, plant operators have to find a way to get hundreds of different, obscure systems online and industrial OEMs have to provide a way to do that securely.

This is a difficult endeavor because it requires manually looking at each and every control system on the market and figuring out how to “see” it on a network, manage it, and secure it, which requires significant time and effort. Not many vendors (whether in the OEM, IT, or cybersecurity spaces) are capable of such a feat, and Sentryo is one of only a few that have emerged successfully. The startup is able to offer a relatively comprehensive industrial security solution that provides visibility, management capabilities, and security, on a converged IT/OT platform.

The acquisition fits in well with Cisco’s strategy to extend its IT network capabilities to the OT and ensure security. Cisco’s initial foray into the space came in the form of industrial security appliances (e.g., Industrial Security Appliance 3000 and the Cisco ASA 5506H-X with FirePOWER Services), but Sentryo adds a whole platform and service level solution that would take Cisco years to develop internally in addition to network visibility for hundreds of different industrial device OEMs. The acquisition fits in well, for example, with Cisco’s connected factory or smart manufacturing solutions, where it will be able to offer a whole management platform and networking solution for plant operators, with security sitting at the core.

Industrial cybersecurity is necessary for safeguarding today’s connected industries, especially with the rapid transformation of critical sectors such as energy and water into smart platforms. Despite the urgency, much of the security work revolves around custom solutions created on-site by non-experts trying to crowbar an OT asset into an existing IT security solution. It generally doesn’t fit, can end up breaking something, and too often wastes resources that would be better spent elsewhere. The market for industrial cybersecurity has been around for some time, but it is sparsely populated as the know-how and effort required to craft a solution that can cover a broad enough range of industrial protocols, devices, and systems to work with complex plant operations is unfortunately limited. As such, vendors that have low industrial OEM reach can find it difficult to gain momentum in the space.

Startups like Sentryo that have partnered with the leading industrial OEMs in the market are therefore few and far between, and Cisco will benefit greatly from the wealth of expertise that the French outfit can bring to the secure industrial networking space. The work facing both firms now is how to integrate Sentryo into Cisco’s broader solutions portfolio and ensure continued IT/OT convergence with the latter’s networking offerings.